Autodesk, Design, Technology, and more blog.

18 posts from September 2007

29 September 2007

Things have been so very busy lately I am not sure when I can get some sleep in.

It is the beginning season for many major Autodesk product betas over at http://myfeedback.autodesk.com so make sure you are signed up and your profile is up to date.

The MyFeedback community 2.0 is in progress and hopefully launched before Autodesk University in November...

I have a presentation and meetings in San Francisco in 2 weeks to a well respected Civil Engineering group.

I have a CAD Camp presentation in Sao Paulo Brazil around the second week in November. I need to get my presentation translated into Brazilian Portuguese and try and muster up speaking some Portuguese. I really love Brazil, the people, the adventure, and the Portuguese language as it is the most beautiful language I have ever heard spoken in all of my global travels. I would also like to take a few days to go back to the Amazon to relax and chase jungle wildlife with my camera.

I have Autodesk University to prepare for and have a booth #900 so be sure to stop by as we will be celebrating the 25th year anniversary of Autodesk and I will have much of my memorabilia with me.

Speaking of the 25th Anniversary of Autodesk and memorabilia, I still have a ton to scan and photograph and post as well as archive.

I need to get rid of the creepy crawly critters I am using as subjects of photos in my home office right now. There are scorpions and tarantulas I picked up from a recent reptile show. I have crickets to feed them but the crickets are driving me absolute mad with their loud chirping all the time. I am sure it sounds funny on the phone speaking with me during a phone conference with crickets in the background. I will be donating these to a local collector as 2 of the scorpions are from Egypt and not to be played with as they have the same toxicity as a king cobra snake with a LD value of 50. They are living about 9 inches from my mouse right now. They just stare at me all day and I am sure thinking how much they would like to have one chance to hit me with their fat tails. I don't really like them either but scorpions are awesome to photograph under a ultra violet light as they glow a bright green with the dark blue hue of the light. You can see an example of a scorpion UV photo I took down by Arches National Park in Utah that has become very popular after I posted it to Flickr.

I am absolutely going stir crazy being so busy that I it is hard to get up to the Wasatch Mountains I can see from my house or get back down to Southern Utah which has drawn me in like a magnet. I was hoping to summit MT. Olympus this weekend to get the stress out and take my photo up there but mother nature with her snow and cold up there is dashing that plan for me. I guess I will be working catching up and hitting the gym.

Enough rambling for now. I can be thankful I have my health, my children, and for being busy as opposed to nothing to do.

28 September 2007

OK many will not even get the play on the word especially if you are under 40 and I am not referring to the playground slide (slippery dip for the Aussies) rule of feet first fiercely enforced by many playground enforcement teams at elementary grade schools. In engineering many years ago before a calculator was under 20 pounds most engineers relied on their trusty slide rule as much as their pocket protectors. OK so I was joking about the pocket protectors, but every engineer was proud of their slide rule and could operate it pretty darn fast.

25 September 2007

Longtime AutoCAD user Robert Grandmaison has snapped, I think. I noticed on Robin Capper's blog RobiNZ CAD Blog the "The Flying Spaghetti Monster meets Freewheel". Pretty amusing but shows about anything 2D or 3D can be hosted in Autodesk Freewheel straight from AutoCAD and many other Autodesk products with nothing for anyone to install to view your files.

I am always trying to keep a list of accomplishments and tasks and just ran across a great free one thanks to Lifehacker named QuickLogger. It simply logs a task and timestamps it in an excel spreadsheet. It can automatically rotate each week starting a new file so you have a continues archive. You could use it just to have a list for keeping track of what you do for later review or for use in year in review performance and accomplishment reports.

Now if it only had a To Do list option combined I would be set and not have to jump in and out of Outlook.

21 September 2007

Several hundred customers have already signed up since I posted the initial announcement but we want even more customer feedback and input. If you have not signed up for this please do so now before September 28th, 2007 and there will be studies will be in October.

I have been in San Rafael and San Francisco California for most of the past 2 weeks. I had many meetings and some management training to attend. I got to see a bunch of coworkers I have not seen in sometime as well which was a bonus. I also stayed with a good friend and spent the evenings talking, BBQ'ing, and seeing old places as I used to live in the Bay area. It was nice seeing the area and friends but the traffic is even worse...I even video taped one commute to later speed up to a Caffeine Commute (6x speed) to the Autodesk office like I have done in a video from back in 2004 "Have I Snapped? Updated 6-22-04".

I took quite a few photos in the Bay Area and some are getting quite the recognition. You are free to use the images personally. The sizes are large enough even for dual monitors or large screen background displays. I know quite a few have used my scorpion under UV light photo as a screen background or various Utah desert images.

14 September 2007

In a continuing effort to provide high-quality products, Autodesk has released AutoCAD Map 3D 2008 Service Pack 1. This Service Pack includes fixes incorporated in AutoCAD 2008 SP1 as well as specific AutoCAD Map 3D 2008 updates. You can install this Service Pack on any AutoCAD Map 3D 2008 installation. We recommend that all AutoCAD Map 3D2008 customers download and install this Service Pack to ensure the highest quality experience when working with AutoCAD Map 3D 2008.

The Readme contains the latest information regarding the installation and use of this service pack. It is strongly recommended that you read this entire document before you apply the service pack to your product. For your reference, you should save the Readme to your hard drive or print a copy.

13 September 2007

Nice article in Desktop Engineering on AutoCAD 2008 features including Annotation Scaling by David Cohn longtime well respected CAD Industry trainer, consultant, writer, and all around nice guy as well as being a camera fanatic like myself.

"Most of you may already know that this year, AU makes its first attempt at an un-conference – which we call AU Unplugged. We strongly believe that attendees have much to share with the greater AU community and we encourage grass-root participation in AU by all AU attendees. This year, we will provide the space to move some of those great hallway conversations into a class room and have more folks benefit from it.

I have been swamped this week while visiting my main office in San Rafael where I spent 8 years prior to escaping to Utah. ;-) I arrived here Tuesday and that evening saw perhaps the best concert ever in my life, and I have seen quite a few over the years. I saw the band Los Lonely Boys at the famous and historic Fillmore Theater in San Francisco. This San Antonio Texas based Tex-Mex band formed of 3 brothers is unbelievable... They are playing in Las Vegas this weekend and if there, they would be a must see for a great time with great talented musicians if you are in the area or hear they are coming to your town.

I head back to Utah on Friday then out to the Bonneville Salt Flats for the events of vehicles running at several hundred miles per hour across the flat dry salty lake bed. Should be a interesting, fun, dusty and a hot experience. On Monday I head back to Northern California for another week of training, meetings, and misc.

06 September 2007

The AutoCAD Product Design Team is working on new features for future releases of AutoCAD. One of our current projects focuses on improving the User Interface "UI". These improvements are designed to make you more productive and efficient. However, to complete the project successfully, we need feedback from as many users as possible. Please help us achieve this goal!

This project is rather challenging and will require about 3 hours of your time. Fortunately, the project can be done in segments, for example one hour a day for three days. Participants will attend a brief online Introduction Meeting, and then can complete the rest of the project online at their own schedule. Participants will be required to electronically sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with Autodesk.

This project will start on September 14, 2007 and last through October 5, 2007.

05 September 2007

All CAD Managers please take a moment to complete the CAD Manager Survey for Cadalyst magazines CAD Management expert and nice guy. You have probably seen or met him at an event, read an article by him, or learned something from him at some point over the years and now you can assist him in his annual survey.

I often stumble across a report of something someone would like to improve in AutoCAD or Autodesk products posted in a forum or blog or even down in a nested comment. Perhaps it is venting, ranting, perhaps it is wishful thinking or an expectation that the members of the small Autodesk product teams can find these items and enact change. Please please please, if you find bugs or have wish list items you want to get acted on make sure to get them to the people that develop the product. If we do not know about it you are likely to not see it addressed in a future release of the product. If you get involved and report it you just may see it in a future release as well as quite possibly get a deeper understanding of the why it has been that way if it were intentional behavior.

This is similar to another peeve of mine and that is some that publish bug lists on their blogs, articles, email newsletters etc. don't report the bugs to the software vendor. Where's the benefit of that withholding or delay to fellow users of that software? It makes for more pain as some will compile this list over time and later publish. It can be a missed opportunity for the software vendor to fix the issue or even know about the issue for research.

For Autodesk Software:

Report bugs and product comments and suggestions to the actual product teams: Product Feedback or if you are a Autodesk Subscription customer, log the product support issues online.

Nominate Wish List Items: http://www.augi.com membership is free and it is made up of fellow Autodesk product users. There is an AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor wish list and you can nominate and vote on wish list items which are provided to Autodesk by AUGI. The voting helps know the priority of items.

Below is my reply to a comment on another blog responding to a person I know very well and respect Matt Stachoni. Matt posted a lengthy commentary about what he would like changed in AutoCAD yet he posted this on a non Autodesk site in a comment to a blog post but luckily I spotted it. I have been trying to get Matt involved in beta testing, test drives, and usability and other customer feedback projects for years and I am aware he is busy but he had the time to post a lengthy comment in one little corner of the Internet, right? ;-)

"Autodesk is always listening and trying to improve. Some things irk us as well. It is important to mention some things just appear different or clear and easy from the outside looking in but that may not always be the case as I have seen both sides as I have been a customer and AutoCAD Team member.

I am shocked that Matt and Ralph could only come up with these lists as there are so many things that could be changed and implemented better or different for a 25 year young product that is used in so many ways. Some items can also take time as well in addition to planning and customer feedback loops to make sure that we are on track and what they asked for.

In my opinion it is all about trying to accommodate everyone and but realizing it is difficult to hit the bulls eye 100% of the time or satisfy everyone all of the time, but you must keep trying.

So you realize we have many more years of product improvement. We constantly crawl the blogs, forums, emails, surveys, user events, etc and other customer feedback locations to stumble upon feedback but please make sure to get your feedback to Autodesk so we don't miss it. So be sure to get involved in the process and not just yell from the sidewalk while the parade passes.

AUGI membership is free and made up of fellow product users and allows and encourages you to nominate your own pet peeves and vote on changes to AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor.

OK now go nominate some items as well as get involved in actively shaping the future of Autodesk products! :-)

04 September 2007

I live in Northern Utah and tonight after weeks of temperatures in the 90-105 degrees Fahrenheit range and lows above 70 degrees Fahrenheit tonight it is dropping fast with a cold front moving into the region. If this is a season change from Summer to Fall or early Winter, it certainly announced itself loudly with a series of dangerous microbursts and rumored tornado sightings. I had to fish my garbage cans out of the street dodging tree branches and dust. And sadly I lost power depraving me from the Intent for a few minutes... They placed an extended alert for the next hour when another ridge is expected to hit us.

"You still have time to register for the FREE Annotation Scaling webcast this morning! Don't miss out on your chance to learn the ins and outs of the new annotation scaling functionality in AutoCAD 2008."